It was announced that a woman in her 60s went non-responsive while riding the Haunted Mansion this past Monday at Disneyland. She was later taken to the hospital where she died.

This is incredibly sad. She was likely visiting the park with family or friends, so now the Happiest Place on Earth will have sorrowful memories for them. The Haunted Mansion (one of my all-time favorite attractions) isn't all that scary, so I'm guessing that it was a medical issue which could have happened anywhere.

At the end of the day, there's danger in everything you do. Just walking out the door exposes you to danger. There's danger in your home. Crossing the street can be lethal, especially in a day-and-age when people are looking at their phones instead of watching the road. But you really don't anticipate dying during a theme park visit (there was another death earlier this year at Orlando's Epic Universe).

In an article over at Entertainment Weekly, a former creative director with Disney Imagineering said that they had discussed removing the hanging corpse of the Ghost Host which appears during the first part of the attraction in the stretching room. And while I understand this is easily the most triggering part of the entire ride, I really hope that they don't do that. It's a frickin' haunted house. Things like this should be expected. Furthermore, it's not all that easy to see in the first place. It's kind of obscured by a screen, and you have to know what you're looking at to really understand it. This is the last attraction overseen by Walt Disney himself, and they've already made some poor decisions by altering it (removing the axe from Constance Hatchaway was clumsy and ridiculous)... it would be nice that at least some of what he intended is preserved.